User blog:Leolab/Visual Novel Review - Katawa Shoujo
Been a while since I both felt strongly enough and was comfortable enough to talk about a VN to review it. This time we've got Katawa Shoujo, a Visual Novel developed in English by a group of 4chan users in 2009. Route List *Shizune Hakamachi *Lilly Satou *Hanako Ikezawa *Rin Tezuka *Emi Ibarazaki Story Katawa Shoujo is the story of a boy with a heart condition playing therapist to a bunch of his classmates at a school for the disabled. The story is very strongly character-focused, with the interactions between Hisao and the cast and the cast amongst themselves driving the plot forward more than the machinations of an overarching villain. With that, the character relationships amongst themselves aren't exactly the most interesting. Where it does is when Hisao, the main character, is involved. This does make sense, as the VN is told entirely from his perspective, but can also make the cast feel like satellites. The story itself is handled surprisingly tastefully, utilizing the characters' disabilities as part of the character, not as a tacked-on quirk. Where it falls flat for me is in the execution of the routes. None of the relationship development feels natural; they're hanging out a bit, and then Hisao or the chosen girl confesses out of the blue, and then they've suddenly always been passionately in love. Because of these rushed writing developments, the bad ends on most routes feels like a more natural extension of where the story is going. Katawa Shoujo suffers from an oversaturation of heroines; the game itself would have benefited from either cutting two out entirely or having longer routes. Story Content: 8/10 Storytelling: 6/10 Total: 14/20 Production The very first thing I need to mention is that Katawa Shoujo is entirely freeware. The production team did this on their own time with their own money. With all that, the final product is pretty incredible. The character sprites are consistent and emotive, while the music does an excellent job of setting moods and is just plain catchy. The animations before each route may not seem like such a big thing today, as pretty much every VN has a fancy animated opening with tacky J-pop, but the animations are beautifully smooth for something that was made in 2009. All that being said, Katawa Shoujo has one major shortcoming in its production: art consistency. While the sprites are consistent, the character CGs are not. Characters can look wildly different from CG to CG and from CG to sprite, to the point where one has to use context to identify who's in the scene. For a visual medium, this is actually a pretty major issue, and dinged the art score pretty hard. Art: 7/10 Sound: 9/10 Art Inconsistency: -2 Total: 14/20 Characters Main Characters The main characters are all well-developed and at least moderately interesting people. There's very little overlap in basic character type, and their interactions with Hisao bring out their motivations and how they contrast with each other. That said, there's also some massive creator favoritism towards the character of Lilly Satou. The story consistently allows her to get away with the kind of manipulative behavior and bossiness Shizune is often criticized for. Further, in her route one of the standout acts of "this relationship is probably toxic" is swept under the rug by Hisao taking on the narrative blameThe part I'm talking about is when Lilly decides to keep her leaving for Scotland from Hisao, despite knowing that his ex did something similar and how much that hurt him. This is somehow Hisao's fault for not pressing her when she was shutting him out.. Side Characters While the side characters are relatively cliche, those cliches are played out in a realistic way. Nurse actually feels like a nurse, Mutou's excessive passion for science puts most of his class off, and Nomiya's a gigantic shitbag. Kenji's the only one a little out there, but his conspiracy ranting is also grounded in how people actually behave. The only character who was bad from a storytelling perspective was Jigoro Hakamachi, who overstays his character usefulness by several scenes. Main Characters: 8/10 Side Characters: 9/10 Favoritism: -2 Total: 15/20 Conclusion Overall, it' easy to see why Katawa Shoujo is often recommended as an introductory to the Visual Novel medium. It's a well-told story with interesting characters, and doesn't really try anything too outlandish. It's a solid read, and worth your while if you haven't or are interested in getting started in Visual Novels. Overall Score: 39/60 *Best Girl: Emi Ibarazaki *Worst Girl: Lilly Satou *Best Route: Rin Tezuka *Worst Route: Lilly Satou *Best Overall Character: Akio Mutou *Worst Overall Character: Shinichi Nomiya *Best Track: Stride Footnotes Category:Blog posts Category:2019 Reviews Category:Visual Novel Reviews Category:Reviews